NEW HAVEN >> The New Haven Board of Education Monday approved its operating budget of $231.5 million for the 2016-17 year, which includes a $5 million increase to the operating budget for the current fiscal year.

Michael Nast, co-chairman of the Finance and Operations Committee, referred to it as a “keeping the lights on” budget. Chief Financial Officer Victor de la Paz has projected that costs will increase by $6.5 million, so members of the board will seek to make $1.5 million in cuts to Central Office operations, assuming the Board of Alders approves the operating budget as-is.

Finance and Operations Committee Co-Chairman Darnell Goldson said the board is not at a point where it knows which cuts it will be making, but the committee felt it was appropriate to approve the dollar amount to work toward. He said Central Office was expected to make cuts of 7 percent across all of its departments, not all of which were submitted to Superintendent of Schools Garth Harries.

“We’re not finished there,” Goldson said.

Student board member Coral Ortiz raised concerns over high school guidance counselors.

“I met a junior who only met her guidance counselor for the first time,” Ortiz said.

According to Ortiz, the student observed that the students who receive the most attention from guidance counselors are those who have parents who arrange to make plans with guidance counselors.

Board member Daisy Gonzalez said, from experience, her son’s guidance counselor was overworked and could not make time to meet with her when she tried to have a meeting to discuss his plan for graduation.

“It is a little disturbing that students feel that only through parent intervention that guidance actually works for students,” said Mayor Toni Harp, who serves as president of the board. “We have so many students in our district who have parents who actually have to work.”

Student member Kimberly Sullivan, a senior, said her transcripts were botched six times and “four different ways” and things were done correctly only because she was knowlegable enough to be proactive and stay on top of her transcripts.

Harp said she felt corrective action must be taken to ensure transcripts arrive where they are supposed to go before college deadlines and that they be done correctly.

Ortiz will serve on the board next year as the senior member alongside member-elect Jacob Spell, who won his election on Friday.

Parent Maria Harris addressed the board, saying she believes her son was pushed out of schools largely because of incompetence among guidance counselors. Her son’s guidance counselor, she said, “made this problem” by failing to provide him with proper supports after he was classified as a special education student.

“Guidance counselors are not doing their job, and the cutting and pasting isn’t going to work anymore,” Harris said.